South Africa township shootings kill 27 as Iran awaits mediator reply and Starship eyes Monday’s first orbital try
Zelenskyy says a Kyiv data center was hit twice Sunday morning; DOT still set to finalize CAFE Monday; SCOTUS third-country response still due Monday 4 p.m. Eastern.
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I'm Nora Vale with your Mid-Morning Update for Sunday, September 27th. At least 27 killed in two South Africa township mass shootings near Johannesburg and Cape Town. No arrests yet. Iran still awaits a formal mediator reply after Trump's Hormuz rejection. Bessent cites flight cuts in Turkey, Oman and the UAE. Zelenskyy says Russia struck a Kyiv data center twice Sunday morning; two children among the injured. SpaceX aims Monday for Starship Flight 14 — first orbital try from Starbase, Texas, at 7:15 a.m. CT, with 26 Starlink V3 sats planned. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: Hurricane Nolo, with top winds near 105 mph, may bring impacts to parts of Hawaii. A strong Nor'easter off the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will bring coastal flooding, rip currents, strong wind gusts, and heavy rain to the region through Monday evening. Our opinion. Iran needs real enrichment limits in writing. Ukraine needs an endgame, not blank checks. End the EV mandate Monday, clear removals of criminal aliens, and cheer an American rocket reaching for orbit. Full stories and sources are at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale. Thanks for watching.
At least 27 people were killed in two separate mass shootings in South African townships within a few hours, police said Sunday, the Associated Press reported via the Washington Examiner and the New York Post. Eight gunmen with AK-47 rifles and pistols opened fire at a bar near Johannesburg late Saturday — killing 17 people (13 men and four women) and wounding 15 in what police described as an attack that also torched vehicles — and hours later gunmen killed 10 and injured 11 at a barbecue restaurant in the Lwandle township east of Cape Town, the New York Post reported. No arrests had been made; the attacks came five days after a township shooting near Durban killed at least 11 people, AP said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday Tehran has seen President Donald Trump’s public rejection of its seven-day Hormuz reopening plan but is still waiting for mediators to convey a definitive U.S. position, BBC and AFP reported. Araghchi said only a negotiated solution can end the conflict and that Iran will not back down from conditions tied to the collapsed June memorandum. Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Saturday that Turkey, Oman and the United Arab Emirates had halted flights by various Iranian airlines and that some banks in the UAE and Turkey had stopped transactions with Iran under the administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” pressure campaign, BBC reported, citing Bessent’s posts on X.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Russian forces struck a data center in Kyiv twice that morning, injuring three people in the first strike, including two children, Ukrinform reported from his Facebook post. Zelenskyy said a man was killed in Kyiv when a drone struck, three people were killed in Zaporizhzhia region shelling, and overnight attacks hit residential buildings and energy infrastructure in Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava, Zhytomyr and Kyiv regions. He again said Russia launched more than 2,200 attack drones, about 1,650 aerial bombs and 38 missiles at Ukraine over the past week. Kyiv Post separately reported that Russian attacks on Kyiv since early Saturday had killed one man and injured at least 10 civilians.
U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle said she was “deeply saddened” by the deaths of four American citizens in Friday’s explosion that leveled a two-story building in Athens’ historic Plaka district near the Acropolis, Fox News reported Sunday. Officials said the four Americans — two men and two women believed to be two couples — were staying in the building; a police source told Reuters they had been expected to catch a 3 p.m. Friday flight from Athens airport but never showed up. Athens Mayor Haris Doukas said a major gas leak is believed to be the cause; six bodies were recovered Saturday, and Reuters said rubble and glass were thrown as far as three blocks away.
The Transportation Department remains set Monday to finalize sharply lower vehicle fuel-economy standards after President Donald Trump said Saturday he approved new Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules that “TERMINATE” what he called the Biden administration’s EV mandate, the New York Post and Washington Examiner reported. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration would formally announce the change Monday; a December proposal set a fleetwide average of about 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031, down from 50.4 under Biden. AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at $4.48 a gallon on Saturday, the New York Post reported.
The White House’s pocket rescission of about $810 million in congressionally appropriated funds — announced Friday and still pending as the federal fiscal year ends Wednesday, Sept. 30 — includes $567 million in HHS services for refugees, asylees and other non-citizens, according to CNBC reporting on the White House move. The administration says President Trump is using Impoundment Control Act authorities to cut spending that does not benefit American citizens; Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, has called the maneuver a clear violation of the Impoundment Control Act, arguing the Government Accountability Office has concluded pocket rescissions are not permitted if Congress has not approved them.
As of Sunday mid-morning, the Supreme Court’s public docket for Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., No. 26A406, still showed only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Sept. 24 order directing respondents to file a response by 4 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 28, with no further Sunday order on the government’s stay application. The Court’s orders page listed no new overnight Sunday miscellaneous orders as of this edition. The application seeks a stay of lower-court limits on third-country removals while the case proceeds.
SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 14 no earlier than 8:15 a.m. EDT (7:15 a.m. CT) Monday, Sept. 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase in South Texas, with a 75-minute window, Space.com and CNN reported Sunday. If successful, the more-than-400-foot Starship would reach orbit for the first time and deploy 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites — a roughly 10-hour mission with the Super Heavy booster aiming for a Gulf of Mexico splashdown and the Ship for a Pacific landing off Chile, Space.com reported. SpaceX said prior flights used passively safe suborbital paths; Flight 14 would begin the orbital phase of development toward a fully reusable system.
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